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Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

americanaffairsjournal.org

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Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

#101

Post by frozencell »

epistasis wrote: post #40

While this is a compelling tale of culture war in the US, I think that the culture war aspect has little to do with nuclear's failure, if anything at all. I am continually offended as I encounter people with Ehrlich's 1970s Malthusianism, but these are not the folks stopping nuclear. Look to France, which has a huge nuclear fleet. Look at what's happened at Flamanville, with a supportive population. What sort of cult…

> What sort of culture war or regulatory arguments could be made to explain France's failures with the EPR design, that so closely mirror the US's failure with the AP1000 design in the past decade?

There is no scientific failure but economic war by the US; on people, parties, presidents.

- https://cyprus-mail.com/2015/06/24/us-agency-spied-on-french... - The CIA files on France 1981-2010: In the secret of the presidents - https://www.amazon.com/Dans-Secret-Presidents-Dossiers-1981-... - CIA files on France 1958-1981 - https://livre.fnac.com/a2917645/Vincent-Nouzille-Les-dossier...

Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

#102

Post by pfdietz »

xaduha wrote: post #51
dctoedt wrote: post #23

Nuclear power is expensive in no small part because of the safeguards needed to try to avert catastrophic accidents. Humans are fallible, and our best intentions can be subverted by inadequate training; fatigue; inattention; laziness; or what we used to call "a loss-of-brain accident." As a result, we can f[oul] up at any stage of design, construction, operation, or maintenance of a nuclear reactor. (Neither Three Mi…

I wonder what you think of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov

Not competitive.

Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

#103

Post by pfdietz »

fi358 wrote: post #90
epistasis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The climate efforts of the past 20 years refute both of these claims decisively. First, carbon taxes, when they have been enacted they have not been effective. And there are massive barriers to enacting them, because there is no constituency that advocates for them. The progress we have made with reducing emissions has been through industrial policy of various sorts, rather than through single taxes. For every proble…

At least in countries like here in Finland, you get almost no energy from solar panels during winter months. 12 hours of storage to a solar array is not going to work at least here.

Finland is one of the worst places in the world for renewables. This means that any industry using significant amounts of energy is going to move away from Finland, once fossil fuels are no longer used.

Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

#104

Post by epistasis »

fi358 wrote: post #90
epistasis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The climate efforts of the past 20 years refute both of these claims decisively. First, carbon taxes, when they have been enacted they have not been effective. And there are massive barriers to enacting them, because there is no constituency that advocates for them. The progress we have made with reducing emissions has been through industrial policy of various sorts, rather than through single taxes. For every proble…

At least in countries like here in Finland, you get almost no energy from solar panels during winter months. 12 hours of storage to a solar array is not going to work at least here.

Here is what I suggested in my comment:

> storage (hydro or battery), to geothermal, to advanced geothermal, to hydrogen, to ammonia storage, to who knows what will be developed over the next few decades

With storage on solar thrown in as only one option at the end. And though it will probably be a dominant solution because it will be by far the cheapest most locations, it won't work everywhere. So look to other tech.

I desperately hope Olkiluoto comes online soon, but it's also a pretty clear indication that nuclear is not a spectacular option for Finland either. But it may be your best option!

Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

#105

Post by tuatoru »

marcosdumay wrote: post #55
tuatoru wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong safeguards are also needed in iron smelters and steel foundries, in ammonia synthesis, and in making aluminum. In the mining of coal and extraction of oil and natural gas. Yet all these materials are cheap.

> Yet all these materials are cheap. Yes, in large part because the safeguards are not nearly as strong. (And a lot of the rest is because the safeguards impede research on how to make nuclear cheaper.)

Arguable, but I won't. The strength of the safeguards is not the problem.

The surface problem is that the rules keep changing. That's part of the expense: repeated redesign, over and over.

The underlying problem that causes that, is that western societies do not want nuclear power. More: they actively dislike it.

It's all academic now anyway, at least as far as stationary electric power generation is concerned. PV power and storage is far cheaper, and the growth of the gap is accelerating.

Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

#106

Post by Krasnol »

conviencefee999 wrote: post #99
Krasnol wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we don't factor the long term effects because we don't know what might happen in a thousand years when some madman digs out our nuclear waste to do some madman stuff for example. This is not about nuclear vs. fossil. Both are from the past. It is nuclear vs. fast improving and cheap technologies around renewable energy sources. It loses that battle and will keep on losing it because everything around renewables i…

You know that we can launch nuclear waste into space right? The thing that's infinitely large. As for renewables the issue is scale and renewables have limitations that investments in fusion and existing fission do not.

> You know that we can launch nuclear waste into space right?

Sure we can. That's why it's so popular eh?

> As for renewables the issue is scale and renewables have limitations

What "scale" is supposed to be the problem there? https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/wind-power-in-europe-...

And yeah...investment into fusion is limitless. The results however are quite disappointing. Meanwhile investments into renewables actually do something. They produce actual products which actually produce energy. In the real world. And they even get better. Imagine that.

Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

#107

Post by hh3k0 »

throw827474737 wrote: post #21
jmyeet wrote: post #13

I'm familiar with the argument that nuclear power is the answer to greenhouse gas emissions. Still, this article is the next level of pro-nuclear propaganda as it launches into quite the anti-environmentalist screed. For example: > The postwar American environmental movement began as an outgrowth from the eugenaics movement. and > Having fallen out of favor during World War II due to its associations with Nazism, eug…

Yeah it is ridiculous, and this still completely ignores that e.g. France's plants age quicker than they can renew them, that nuclear will never be safe (not talking the ""normal safe"" but what's the threat in Ukraine right now), that Europe just learns that also nuclear is of not much help during heat and drought (lol, nuclear for base power load), and that whatever will need to happen that going nuclear fully is j…

Boggles my mind how people can witness Russia taking Europe hostage by occupying a nuclear power plant and making vague threats that accidents just happen sometimes and think "you know, the world really needs more of those looming threats". Let alone that extreme weather events are potentially dangerous for nuclear power plants -- and extreme weather events are, thanks to climate change, happening more and more often.

Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

#108

Post by qqqwerty »

alerighi wrote: post #83
epistasis wrote: post #40

While this is a compelling tale of culture war in the US, I think that the culture war aspect has little to do with nuclear's failure, if anything at all. I am continually offended as I encounter people with Ehrlich's 1970s Malthusianism, but these are not the folks stopping nuclear. Look to France, which has a huge nuclear fleet. Look at what's happened at Flamanville, with a supportive population. What sort of cult…

Nuclear energy may seem expensive, because it has a big initial cost to get started, and we tend not to factor the long term effects of what we do. What is the cost of using fossil fuels? What is the cost and the damage done by climate change? An amount of money that we can't even quantify. So sure, burning coal/oil/gas may be cheap now, but it has an enormous long term cost that we just now are starting to pay.

This isn't about nuclear vs coal. It is about nuclear vs renewables. And what it really comes down to is that nuclear is really expensive and takes way too long to build. For every nuclear plant you build, we can build the exact same generation capabilities for about half the cost and it can be built in a quarter of the time[1]. That means that the renewable solution will have already mostly paid for itself before the nuclear plant delivers its first electron.

I am 100% in support of nuclear where it make sense. But there has been this weird strain of FUD being spread around painting renewable advocates as some sort of crazed anti-nuclear zealots. Some of this is coming from pro oil and gas groups looking to spread uncertainty and doubt to disrupt decarbonization efforts. But it is also getting picked up by a certain subset of "contrarians" that think they know better than everybody else, but are clearly not doing their research.

[1]https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/08/05/youve-got-30-billion-...

Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

#109

Post by ska »

salmo wrote: post #71
ska wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't decarbonation imply replacing something? Lots of places with the right distributions of water use hydroelectric, because it was cheaper to build out. Ontario has craploads of water (hello, great lakes) but not much elevation, at least not in the right places.

Funny enough, "electricity" and "hydro" were synonymous in Toronto when I lived there in the early 90's because of Ontario Hydro. It was named for the electricity coming from Niagara Falls, but then yeah... like you said.

Oh I forgot about Niagara ! Well one fortunately placed drop :)

Re: Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

#110

Post by pfdietz »

musha68k wrote: post #15
fundatus wrote: post #5

Who Killed Nuclear Energy? The absurd cost to build this technology and the emergence of much more cost-effective and emission-free alternatives. It's as simple as that. It wasn't the tree-huggers or a big conspiracy.

Yes, it’s interesting to watch consensus switch over to pro-nuclear again. I’m not only referring to power generation by the way. In terms of global warming I’m still conflicted myself. It’s a complex topic. Going nuclear probably would be a pragmatic last minute band-aid if it had been applied 20 years ago. Now I’m not so sure anymore. Future plants will also likely meet more wars and other shocks to the system. You…

The consensus is not switching over to pro-nuclear again. There's a PR effort to make it seem like that might be happening, but follow the money.
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